The heart of the Emerald

Chapter Two: The Truth

What do you mean, why are you lying to me, how cruel do you have to be to make up lies like this? She would never do anything to harm any of us, it was an accident, and you know it was!’ Enna screamed at Giulia before flinging her chair back to leave, she wasn’t going to stick around to hear the lies that would come out of Giulia’s mouth.

‘Wait!’ Giulia reached for Enna who shrugged her off with force. ‘I told you, you wouldn’t like the truth, but you wanted to hear it so here it is.’ She said to Enna’s retreating frame.

‘She wouldn’t.’
‘But she did,’ Giulia sighed.
‘Look, I don’t want this to be true anymore than you do but the forensics don’t lie.’ She went back to the table, sat and took a drink of her Bacardi and diet coke before looking at Enna again.
‘I wasn’t allowed to report the entire truth, as for some reason unbeknown to me there is a gagging order out on the press, preventing us from telling the entire story, those of us who know for sure what happened have fought for three years to tell this story and it's gotten us nowhere.’
‘Well, that’s a lie, it got you assistant editor.’ Enna said with sarcasm to her voice as she walked over to sit back at the table.
‘Ha, yes, you’re right, but it didn’t get me editor in chief did it, nor did it get me the job I really wanted at The Times, no, I’m still stuck in Lavenham working under a giant oaf who wouldn’t know a good story if it bit him in his fat arse.’ She downed the rest of her drink with a snarl. ‘Nope, I’m still here reporting on who is attending the next retirement party and editing articles on who has grown the largest cucumber this year, like anyone but the pompous pricks with all their millions in the bank gives a crap.’

Enna looked at Giulia, truly looked at her for the first time, ‘how old are you?’
‘Why?’ She said with a hint of curiosity.
‘No reason,’ Enna said whilst thinking she thought Giulia was around fifty when she first saw her but now realised, she must be in her late thirties, the stress of unsuccessful dreams etched on her once pretty face.
‘Ok, I’m listening, tell me what you know, and I promise not to scream and shout again.’

Giulia poured herself another drink and even offered Enna one who eyed her with suspicion, ‘What?’ she said, ‘you’re going to need it after what I’m about to say.’
Enna nodded her head for the drink.
After placing a freshly poured glass in front of them both, Giulia continued.

‘The source I have works within the metropolitan police and three years ago a file landed on his desk, what appeared to be a drunk grandmother falling asleep at the stove whilst making a batch of porridge for her grandchildren wasn’t as it seemed, there were two sacrificial daggers found within the ashes of the house.’
‘What do you mean sacrificial?’
‘That was my first question as well,’ she took a drink as did Enna for the first time, tasting the heat of the alcohol and finding that she liked it, so she took another swig.
‘The blades had engravings on them, Celtic engravings. Symbols that nobody had seen before, the hilt had an emerald and the blades were made with obsidian which hasn’t been seen in sword making in centuries, what was particularly strange though was that the metal couldn’t be burnt. There wasn’t a mark on them, they hadn’t tarnished or melted at all.’

‘I have pictures of them actually, give me a moment.’ She stood and walked up the stairs, leaving Enna alone with only Neville for company. Neville was now sat on top of the counter watching Enna curiously, tilting his head from side to side. ‘Err, hello Neville.’ She said to the sassy looking cat. Neville looked at her again and deciding that she was sufficiently boring jumped down from the counter, strutted in front of Enna and kicked his back legs out like he would have he used the toilet and wanted to cover it up, ‘Charming,’ Enna said to the cat who sauntered on his way.

Giulia was back now with a box in her hands. ‘This is everything I have from the reports I made,’ she said launching the box onto the table and rifling through it.
‘Here,’ she handed Enna two pictures.
Enna’s eyes widened at the sight of them, she had forgotten them as she had only ever seen them once in her life before, Giulia’s description didn’t do them any favours.

Enna had only seen them once before when she was a child and had become ill one night whilst sleeping at Nanna Mary’s. She had begun to run a temperature and had a headache one evening so nanna Mary let her camp in the living room with her rather than keep all her cousins awake. She also didn’t want to risk any of them getting it, Enna was very excited none of them ever stayed in the living room as Nanna always said that after spending the day chasing lots of little rascals, she needed her space to relax. She made up a bed for Enna on the floor with a mattress of quilts, it was like sleeping on clouds Enna had thought. They had stayed up late together to watch movies, which Enna had thought was amazing as she was never allowed to stay up late usually. Nanna Mary had gone to the front door for a cigarette when Enna dropped the remote, it fell underneath the couch, so she rolled over to collect it. As she was feeling for the remote, she pulled out something else, one of the daggers. She was frozen in shock when Nanna Mary came back in and found her with the dagger in her hand. She shouted at Enna, saying that they weren’t toys and she should never touch things that didn’t belong to her. Enna had burst out crying as Nanna Mary had never shouted like that at her before, she watched through her tears as Nanna bent to the floor retrieved the other dagger that Enna didn’t know was there and walked out of the room. When she came back, she didn’t have them with her but sat next to Enna and asked Enna how she found them. She told her she was looking for the remote and Nanna had apologised for shouting at her, she told her to keep them a secret between them and that she hoped she could trust her with this secret as it was special. Enna pinkie promised she wouldn’t tell anyone, and she never did, as everyone knows a pinkie promise is binding. That night Nanna Mary and Enna had nanna’s special hot chocolate and watched two more films together before falling asleep. It was one of Enna’s favourite nights ever and as time had gone on, she had forgotten about the daggers and only remembered the yummy hot chocolate and the films that she watched with her Nanna.

‘You have seen them before, haven’t you?’ Giulia’s questioning voice woke Enna from her memories.
‘Yes, once,’ she answered in a choked voice, her throat suddenly closing. She took a gulp of the Bacardi, relishing in the heat from the alcohol as it awakened her voice again.
‘They were your grandmother’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘The two youngest children were found in positions which meant they could have only died from stab wounds to the chest.’
‘What, no?’ Enna looked to Giulia, ‘That can’t be right, someone else must have done this, my nanna would never harm any of us.’ She said this through a voice which gave away her insecurities about her answer.
‘Enna, there was nobody else there, the CCTV from the area shown your nanna coming back minutes before the blaze, other than your cousin Patrick there had been nobody else enter that flat that entire day, they looked all over at ring doorbells, CCTV, dashcams from passing cars, nobody came or went apart from your nanna and Patrick.’
‘It’s wrong, it has to be wrong.’
‘I’m sorry, but it isn’t.’ Giulia almost sounded sorry for Enna.
‘What about Patrick, you said that Anya and Michael were stabbed, there are two daggers not three, how did he die was it the fire?’
Giulia looked at Enna for a long time before she asked her if she really wanted to know? After confirmation from Enna that she did, she continued.
‘Your eldest cousin died from his brain exploding within.’
‘Wait, what? How is that possible?’
‘Nobody knows, but his brain matter had combusted, there is no way to described it other than that. Three pathologists looked at the bodies and not one of them no how this could happen, particularly to someone has healthy and young as Patrick was.’
Enna placed her elbows on the table and rested her head in her hands where she took three deep breaths.
‘And my nanna? How did she die?’
‘Her death was the easiest to explain, she died of a heart attack, something completely normal in the grand scheme of things.
‘However, the pathologists did uncover something strange, your nanna’s organs were all very healthy.’
Enna looked up from her hands, ‘and?’
‘Well, she was eighty-three years of age and yet her organs were that of a twenty-year-olds. Her eyes had perfect vision, her lungs, kidneys, brain etc…none of them shown any signs of ageing, yet she had a heart attack. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’
‘I suppose so, but then none of this makes any sense anyway, so why should healthy organs be any different,’ Enna sat up straight, ‘hold on, if they were all dead before the fire how did it break out in the first place?’
‘Now you are asking intelligent questions, exactly, there was nobody there but them, your nanna had just returned from the shops minutes before the flats went up in an almighty blaze, she couldn’t have cooked any porridge and let’s face it, who wants porridge at 2 o clock in the afternoon?’ Giulia poured herself another drink.
‘Enna, I don’t know how the blaze started, I don’t know why your nanna would kill her grandchildren, especially ones she loved as dearly as she did you four, but what I do know for certain is that she did do it, she put those daggers inside your cousins’ hearts and made sure that they did the job correctly.’
Enna had thought when she arrived at the terraced house with the mint green door that she would confront the woman who had ruined her nanna’s memory. She had thought that she would look her in the eyes and tell her that she was a spiteful, money grabbing woman, who used people to get ahead in life and that she hoped she would die a very lonely death. She never expected to hear what she heard that day, moreover, she never expected to believe it either. As she stumbled from the little terraced house with the mint green door, she thought about everything that she had learnt that day, she was still thinking about it when she approached the train station where her last happy memory had occurred.

She found herself walking down the cobbled path, past the small park alongside the train tracks that she had played on many times as a child, past the ticketing office and walking to the small Victorian bridge. She stood there utterly exhausted and bereft, she thought about the memories of the last day she could remember where she felt normal and then she wretched, she wretched and wretched until her entire stomach was emptied over the side of the small maroon and white wooden bridge. Then she collapsed next to her own sick and cried. She cried and cried until she couldn’t cry no more. When she finally felt her grief clearing, she thought about how lucky she was that it was a secluded spot in a usually busy train station, she thought it was unusually quiet especially in the height of summer. She looked at the time 15:04pm, aaah she thought that’s why, the trains hadn’t returned for the day. It wasn’t a usual train station where the trains took commuters places, it was specifically used to take people from one small country town to the next as part of day trips. They even did trips at Christmas with Santa on them. Enna and her cousins had been on that trip many times, it was a tradition, one she hadn’t completed since the year they had died and likely never would again.

She stood, dusted herself off, wiped her mouth and began the journey home. She came out of the train station and headed back towards main street, hoping that her old friends had long since departed the fast-food parlour. She found herself in luck, there was nobody in the garden as she crossed the road, she could see from the traffic lights. She carried on past and thought about how quiet it was, the town felt eerily quiet for a Tuesday afternoon. She has been too wrapped up in her own feelings before to notice how there was nobody around, she thought back to the train station, there had been someone at the ticket office hadn’t there? She couldn’t remember. She carried on walking picking up the pace, but not running just encase she was imagining things and people saw her. The last thing she needed was for people in the town to see her running from nothing and begin whispering about her again. No, she wouldn’t give them any more ammunition.

She felt that horrible spine-tingling feeling as she walked through the town, she wasn’t sure if she was seeing things, but she swore that the clouds were changing shape and not the kinds where you look for elephants and ponies, no these were swirling above her head. She picked up the space unsure if it was due to her not eating properly again today and then emptying her stomach of everything she had picked at for breakfast. She carried on her journey, she had long past the chronicles headquarters and gone past the library where again she hadn’t seen a soul. Never in her sixteen years had she seen this part of town so quiet, even when she had been out at night it was relatively busy, with people heading to the restaurants or wine bars. Enna decided to take the short cut home, she didn’t want to be out any longer than necessary
She saw the park across the road, her house was on the other side facing the North entrance with the big metal gates. She could see it in her mind, she imagined herself going through the door and straight upstairs to shower before finding her sanctuary to gather her thoughts together. Less than ten minutes and you will be safe Enna, she told herself. She crossed the road swiftly, never losing speed and headed through the south facing gates, the sun beamed on her back as she crossed the threshold. That’s when she really felt unsafe.

She didn’t know what it was, she just knew something was there. She could feel it near the trees that lined the pathway that led her to safety. She continued the path towards her house; with every step she took forward she could feel something gaining on her, something she couldn’t see. She decided to run, her heart was racing, she didn’t need a smartwatch to tell her that as she could feel it in her ears. She pounded the floor with her feet, until she stumbled and fell, grazing her knees and the palms of her hands. ‘GET UP ENNA,’ she heard in her head, ‘ENNA, YOU MUST RUN TO THE HAWTHORN TREE.’ She heard the voice again, screaming now, almost panicking, ‘QUICK ENNA, THEY ARE COMING.’ She jumped at this and began her run again, running faster than she ever had in her entire life, adrenaline, and something else, fear, coursing through her veins. ‘THE TREE ENNA, GO TO THE TREE.’ She saw it then in the near distance, the Hawthorne tree that her nanna had told her held good fairies, something she had come to dismiss as fairy tales as she grew, yet there she turned heading towards it and away from home.

She didn’t think she would make it, but somehow with one giant push she did. She dived for the tree and stumbled through its overlapping leaves until she touched the bark, instantly, she knew she was safe. If she held the tree, she would be safe, she didn’t know how she knew but she just did. She kept one hand on the tree as she turned to face the path she had run down; she couldn’t see anything there. Her breathing was hard and deep, and she struggled to calm her beating heart as she watched the path, expecting something to jump out at any second. Nothing did, in fact as she looked through the trees, she noticed that the skyline which had held swirling dark clouds less than five minutes ago, was clear. She listened intently, the environment which was filled with silence a few minutes ago, was now filled with the noise of a summer’s day. She heard birds in the sky, children playing in the park, dogs barking and cars rumbling by on the distant roads. None of it made any sense. She decided after a few more minutes that it was safe enough to finish the distance home. As she begun to make her way back through the tree, she happened to glance down. There next to the tree’s roots was loads of flattened grass, almost like someone with tiny little feet had been dancing around the tree. She shook her head deciding that the day had just been too much for her and carried on pushing the branches and leaves away until she made it to the path. As Enna turned right to carry make her way home, she glanced back at the tree, she swore she could see something shimmering like glitter next to the tree’s roots but dismissed it as she did everything else unusual from that day.

Once home, she showered and fell onto her bed, finally feeling a sense of calm come over her. She was exhausted, the day had been a lot for anyone, she didn’t want to think about what she had heard about her nanna, she didn’t want to think about any of it. So, she did something she hadn’t done in over a year and opened her bedside drawer to take out the medication the doctor had prescribed her three years ago when she was struggling with everything that happened and popped one in her mouth before she finally succumbed to a dreamless sleep.

When she woke, she thought about everything that occurred the day before. She knew that what Giulia had told her was the truth, but she didn’t want to process it any more than she wanted to think about the weird walk home that she had. She looked over to the packet of sleeping tablets on her bedside cabinet and decided that she didn’t want to go down the path she had gone down when she needed them. That was a dark time for Enna, she had struggled with the death of her cousins and her nanna for a long time before her mum took her to see Doctor Pratchett. She had told her that he wanted to listen to her and that she didn’t have to talk about anything she didn’t want to, she saw the concern in her mum’s eyes and so she decided she would go for her sake if not for her own.

The day she arrived at Dr. Pratchett’s office she knew she would like him; he had a warm face. As odd as it sounds to describe someone as having a warm face, that’s what he had. Her first meeting with him, her mum stayed and then after that it was Enna and the Dr only. It took her about six weeks of meetings before she opened to him and told him little bits about her life. He seemed interested, always asking questions about the story’s nanna told them and wanting to know more about Enna. He had asked her if she believed the story’s that her Nanna had told and Enna had told him no, she knew now that she was older that they were fairy tales and nothing more. He seemed almost satisfied by that response and after that became distant with Enna no longer interested in her past or her feelings. He had told her once that she was unremarkable, which shocked Enna and made her not want to go anymore which was fine by the doctor, he prescribed her sleeping tablets, told her mum that she would move on in her own time and that if she struggled to sleep anymore to take one tablet a night and they would put her to sleep in minutes for around twelve hours.

Enna took the tablets for months and months every single night, until she wasn’t waking much during the day at all. Her mother and father became concerned at they noticed she was falling asleep around six each evening and not waking until it was time to go to school or even lunch time at the weekends. She was also moody and would argue with them when they voiced their concerns. One weekend Enna didn’t wake at all for twenty-four hours and that was the final straw with her parents, who took all her tablets from her room. Except this one packet which Enna had managed to hide at the back of her wardrobe. It had scared Enna though; she knew she needed help with not only her grief but with her low mood and inability to sleep properly without medication. She spoke to her mum about it, and she suggested Dr.Pratchett again, but Enna insisted they see someone else, his opinion of her sticking in the back of Enna’s mind. Her mum found another doctor who happened to have a practice in the centre of Lavenham above the dentist surgery.

Dr.O’neal was a lovely doctor, she was kind and generous with her time and you could tell right away that she cared about her patients. She helped Enna a lot, she delivered something called CBT which Enna and her parents had never heard of before and after eight sessions Enna was already seeing improvements. She no longer took any of the tablets that Dr.Pratchett had given her and was able to use the calming methods that the Dr gave her to relax her mind and her body when she felt panicked or anxious. Enna saw Dr.Pratchett for a year, she helped her with her grief and whilst it was always there Enna was able to manage her emotions about it a lot better, that was until yesterday of course. Enna was grateful for Dr. O’Neal; she gave her the courage to apply to colleges far away and shown her that she could live even though she didn’t want too anymore. Those who truly care for their patients can have the biggest impact on their lives and truly make a difference. Dr. O’Neal is proof of that.

Thinking about Dr. O’Neal made Enna realise that regardless of what she has learnt about the circumstances surrounding the deaths of her family, she couldn’t change it, it’s in the past and she was moving to Ennis in two weeks’ time. That’s it she decided, I am going to concentrate solely on the move and not let anything spoil it. I have packing to do and goodbyes to say to people, so that’s what I’m going to do, I must concentrate on the living. With determination in her steps, she got up from her bed and went downstairs to have breakfast with her mum and dad, who were preparing bacon and eggs. She kissed her dad on the cheek and hopped on the stool next to him pinching a piece of bacon off his plate. Her dad looked at her mum a smile on his face, ‘ok cheeky, good morning, what’s made you smile so much?’
‘Nothing dad, I have just realised that I won’t be here for much longer, so I need to make the most of the pair of you.’
Her dad was sad at the prospect of losing his daughter in a couple of weeks' time but was happy to see her smiling. He knew a clean slate was what she needed and whilst the goodbyes he will say at the airport will be sad, they will also be bittersweet as he knew she would be able to move on with her life and look to the future once she started a fresh.
‘I know darling, you’re right we will have to make sure to spend all of our time together this next two weeks.’
‘Definitely.’ Enna said smiling.
Her mum had her back to them and a lone tear fell down her eyes into the eggs she was scrambling, she would miss Enna, but she was also excited to hear about her finding herself again, she just hoped that this trip would do that, and she would have her smiling, happy daughter back once again.

Enna spent the next two weeks mostly with her parents, she did go and see Dr. O’Neal with a bunch of flowers and a card to say thank you for everything she had done for her. Dr. O’Neal was happy to see her former patient had made the decision to follow her dreams and gave her a hug goodbye. She also stopped off to see Robert who she found in the garden of the fast-food parlour with his friends. It was awkward asking him for a word in front of everyone, they all stopped talking the second she stepped out into the garden. As soon as she asked to speak to Robert and he said yes, they started to whisper behind their hands like she didn’t know they were talking about her. She didn’t care though as she had something important to say.

‘I’m going away tomorrow, and I wanted to say something to you before I leave.’ Robert was a kind boy, he was popular, he had dark hair and blue eyes which always seemed to be questioning her looking to see if she was ok.
‘Where are you going to?’ He asked.
‘I am moving to Ireland for college, I am going to stay with my mum's cousin in Ennis where my grandmother is from.’ He looked surprised at this.
‘Oh, ok, I didn’t realise, will you be alright going there is your mum and dad going with you? Nobody has said they are moving, and you know what this town is like everyone knows everything about everyone,’ there was humour in his voice.
‘Yes, I will be fine thank you, I'm staying with family after all and even though my parents are staying here that have jobs and lives here, I need to, erm…I need to start afresh you know?’
‘Yes, of course, yeah I mean, sorry, I didn’t mean to pry, I was just curious I guess and a little jealous, nobody ever really leaves Lavenham, I suppose it’s a shock.’
‘I suppose it is, anyway, I wanted to say thank you to you?’
‘Thank you? What for?’
‘For always caring and asking about me when nobody else cared anymore.’ He blushed at this, this was always something Enna found cute, how he could turn red at the slightest thing, she had forgotten about it over the years.
‘I suppose I should say you're welcome, but you are wrong everyone always cared they just never knew what to say anymore once you stopped answering our calls.’
‘Yeah, I know, I'm sorry about that, but you always knew what to say and I'm grateful for it even though I never spoke back to you, I wanted you to know that it mattered to me, and I am glad I know you, Robert Curtayn.’ She stood on her tip toes and kissed his cheek before saying, ‘never change, goodbye Robert.’ She turned to walk away just as she saw his cheeks turn even redder.
As she walked back through the door, she heard him shout back to her, ‘you should never change either Enna, you're perfect as you are, and you always were.’
She smiled at him one last time before turning and walking away forever.

Enna spent the last night at home with her mum and dad. After the fire her aunty and uncles all moved away, they couldn’t bear to live in the town anymore after they lost their children here. Enna always felt that they resented her for living but her mum had told her that was nonsense, and she shouldn’t think such things, yet it never stopped them from packing up in the middle of the night without a word to any of them. Her aunt Patricia moved to New Zealand a year after the fire, she had split from her husband, Patrick's dad and used the money to fund a move to the other side of the world, as far away from Lavenham and the rest of them as possible. None of them had heard from her since she moved. Her uncle Finn had moved to London with his wife and their boarder colly Rufus, he had said to her once that looking at her was too hard as I reminded him too much of Anya. They got Christmas cards from them each year but other than that contact was limited to need to know news only. Ciaran was her mum’s youngest brother, and he was a single dad to Michael, whose mother had disappeared one day when he was a baby saying the mum life just wasn’t for her. Mum told me she was heavily into drugs and had been a known prostitute which wasn’t known to Ciaran when he impregnated her at the ripe old age of eighteen. He always said it was the best thing that happened to him and didn’t even try to find her when the fire happened. Ciaran struggled a lot when Michael died and turned to his old ways of wheeling and dealing as my mum called it. This had landed him in prison serving twelve years for aggravated burglary and something else which my mum didn’t tell me. We only heard from him when he wanted mum to top his prison allowance up.

So, that was that all of Enna’s goodbyes were said, her room was packed up of everything she wanted to take with her to her new life and she was ready to go. Her mum and dad brought her to the airport, they were only allowed as far as check in due to security so once she was through that would be it. Her mum cried all the way to the airport and her dad spent most of his time trying to calm her down, to no avail. When they arrived, dad unloaded the suitcases whilst her mum put her in a big bear hug, seemingly not wanting to let her go. Her dad had to prise her from her arms before warning her that she would miss her flight if they didn’t get a move on. ‘Now you know Shannon will meet you at the airport I have shown you a picture haven’t i? She has dark curly hair like Nanna’s and green eyes. She looks like aunty Chrissy just younger,’ She had bent down to eye Enna, making sure she knew. ‘Yes, mum I remember, and I have the picture in my pocket its fine nothing is going to happen to me.’ Her mum hugged her again, ‘ I know it's just you have never been anywhere without us and you have never been to Ireland before so you don’t know what it's like over there, ive read some awful things about young girls being kidnapped and have you seen Taken, your dad is no Liam Neeson, it's going to be me chasing you down if you get sold to some Albanians for sex.’ ‘Okay, okay that’s enough now Maggie, you know that’s not going to happen you need to calm down before you give her a panic attack.’ Her mum stopped talking at that and simply nodded her head in defeat.

Wow Enna thought, my mums an absolute psychopath, but instead of saying it she went over and wrapped her arms around her for one last bear hug, 'It's alright mum, if I see any kind looking Frenchmen who offer to share a taxi with me, I promise I won't take them up on it. I love you and I will ring you as soon as I land so you don’t have to worry about any Albanians when I get to Ireland.’ Her mum squeezed her tighter, ‘I love you,’ ‘I love you to,’ Enna said into her hair. She turned to her dad who had his arms outstretched waiting for her, she stepped into his hug and held on tight. ‘Go find yourself again little one, you know we will always be here for you anytime you need us, and don’t listen to your mum, anyone kidnaps you, I will find them, and I will kill them,’ he grinned as he pulled back from the hug. Enna patted him on the arm, ‘good to know dad,’ she laughed, ‘I love you both so much and I will speak to you both soon,’ she said as she pushed the trolley holding her suitcases and walked towards check in. She looked back as soon as she had put her bags through and retrieved her tickets. She saw her parents waving next to the doors that led them back to the car park, she blew them a kiss, gave them a quick wave and walked towards security, ready to start her new life in Ireland, going back to where her own families story had once begun.